Hi again,

my Stilo can stand all day long on a flat road and nothing happens, but when I drive to my garage, which has some angle (front is higher), it will bleed engine oil. It is happening since I bought it (6 months), but I thought it was WD40 with some dirt. Oil level went from 5 to 3 points in that time, dipstick shows the same.
MES shows no error and car drives fine (as far as I can tell)
Any ideas what could be cause of this?

I forgot to mention it's JTD 85kW 2003. I will lift the car, but I have no idea where to look.

roll said:

Any ideas what could be cause of this?

Click to expand...

It sounds like oil is getting out from somewhere...


Have a sniff of the oil. If it smells like fried bacon it could be transmisson oil. If it's transmission oil, it can only be leaking from the gearbox shaft seal (the oil will come out from the gap between the engine and the clutch bell-housing) or more likely, the driveshaft oil seals, which you will see on the driveshafts.

Get under the car and check the driveshafts where they emerge from the differential casing. You might need to clean off some black "glue" (old and dirt) from the driveshafts and then look again a week later to see if they stayed clean/dry or whether they're oily again. If they're oily again, sniff the oil to see if it's smokey bacon or just engine oil that's dripped from somewhere else (oil leaks move over a hot surface really well).

More likely though, it's engine oil since it only drips when the car is at an angle. Gear oil would be able to drip all the time.

Do you have an undertray? This can collect oil from anywhere and then when it builds up, it will drip out. You will have to remove the undertray and check where the oil is coming from. My guess is that most of it will be coming from the front of the engine.

Take off the plastic top cover and have a look on the front of the engine, on the right. If there's oil coming out of the top end of the engine, you'll see it down the front (and possibly all over the radiator and the gearbox).

The culprit is probably the rocker cover gasket. The rocker cover gasket has an arch at each end, where it clears the camshaft supports). The bottom "corner" of each arch is tricky to seal... but the gearbox end seems to be the most leaky, so your leak is possibly from there... either in front or behind the cam-shaft support. Probably in front.

In addition, there's a metal cylinder on the right of the engine (ahead of the throttle body) which I think is a variator. It has a metal gasket which is quality leaking material since nobody ever replaces it. Take yours off (the 3 x 13mm bolts) and re-seal it with silcone sealant or a new gasket.

** If anyone can find the part number for this gasket, let me know..

While you have the covers off, it's a good time to de-grease the engine since if you fix the leak your engine will now stay clean and if you don't fix the leak, a clean engine makes it easier to find the leak the next time you look.


Ralf S.

First of all thanks, you're for some reason only one who answer my posts..

I really suspect engine oil, since it is black and in gearbox shoul be "new" oil (max 2 years). Also the level dropped so.. I don't have undertray.

That cylinder thing next to throttle body should be a vacuum pump. (Variator is type of gearbox, right?) I changed thermostat few weeks back and there was no oil nearby. Top looks fine, I think it leaks from bottom.

Yes cleaning looks like the best idea. I just wanted to know if there is any common place for this engine to leak from. On other forum they said it could be dipstick seal or crankshaft seal.
I am getting ready for the worst as usual lol.

If the top of the engine is clean check gearbox side of the engine if oil leaks on gearbox and end up in one of the crevises of the gearbox its also possible , on your way there check also gearbox dipstick if you have one. And no variator is not a gearbox its a mechanical intake/exhaust valve timming mechanism

roll said:

First of all thanks, you're for some reason only one who answer my posts..

I really suspect engine oil, since it is black and in gearbox shoul be "new" oil (max 2 years). Also the level dropped so.. I don't have undertray.

That cylinder thing next to throttle body should be a vacuum pump. (Variator is type of gearbox, right?) I changed thermostat few weeks back and there was no oil nearby. Top looks fine, I think it leaks from bottom.

Yes cleaning looks like the best idea. I just wanted to know if there is any common place for this engine to leak from. On other forum they said it could be dipstick seal or crankshaft seal.
I am getting ready for the worst as usual lol.

Click to expand...

The rocker cover is a fairly common leaking spot on JTD (and FIRE) engines, since they have raised camshaft bearing/supports, so the gasket has the "arch" in it and a lot of them leak from the "corner" angle.

If the rocker cover area and the front of the engine are clean of oil then it's not the rocker cover gasket or the "variator" (I'm still not 100% sure what it is) on the end of the cam-shaft. Mine is leaking quite a bit there so your post reminded me to buy a new rocker cover gasket... you gave me a job for next weekend.

It's worth having a look at the dipstick seal but the seal is above the oil level and it would have to be completely shot to leak badly... but if it's that, then it's quite easy and cheap to fix.

If the oil leak looks worse around the join between the engine and the clutch housing then it could be the crankshaft oil seal. You can clean the casing (mine has a little "foot" on the differential case where oil collects) and then have a look every few days to see which bit gets most oily first.

Crank oil seal is probably best changed when your clutch and release bearing are due for a change too. At least then you won't have to touch it ever again.


Ralf S.